How This Battery Runs on Seawater and Makes Freshwater

It would be cool if we got a video every once in a while with an update on how the development of technologies mentioned some time ago is going now

We see a lot of awesome new discoveries on this channel, but most get dropped for some reason. I hope this idea survives and leads to something even more awesome

Just starting the video, this has major “too good to be true” vibes

A place I could see these being used is at lithium extraction sites where they pump up brine and extract the lithium. Those brines already have very high sodium levels, so you could potentially run one or multiple stages of these batteries to strip out some of the sodium before the lithium processing starts. That could make the lithium less diluted by sodium and potentially reduce some of the work the processing plant has to do. It might even save enough money to justify using these batteries, even if they still have relatively short cycle life while the technology is being developed. As long as adding the battery stages doesn't increase the overall cost of extracting lithium, I would think processing centers would be interested in having batteries that also help improve the extraction process.

slow clap for the "brine child" pun

Imagine ships running on sea water - the cruise industry would explode

The discharge method is different than the charge method, which is very unusual. Since the chemical reactions are very different, I wonder if the battery efficiency is very good. It may be they got lucky and the energy state of the products are really close to the starting constituents, but I'd guess there's a lot more energy that needs to go in overall than comes out.

I have been watching Undecided for years and love it. Great presentation, witty humor, and comprehendible. Sometimes I would like a better understanding of what I see. Please identify all acronyms. In your graphics. I do not know what TRL means in relation to Research, Development and Deployment. Thank you.

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Cheese CURDS with fries & gravy, not just cheese! As a Canadian, I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH!

:12 Stop poutine weird thoughts in my head, Matt! 🤣🤙🏼

This channel is basically a sci fi channel because the technology that they report is still nowhere near commercial

What happens to the chlorides? Does the battery just off-gas chlorine gas?

2:24 -- As I understand the naming conventions, Korean names are almost always a monosyllabic family name followed by a disyllabic personal name, so Kim Youngsik's family name would be "Kim", making him "Professor Kim", not "Professor Youngsik" -- the latter being like referring to you as "Mister Matt" or "Professor Matt", instead of "Mister Ferrell" or "Professor Ferrell". The form of address is not helped by his name being displayed with the family and personal names displayed in Western order, with the family name last, instead of family name followed by personal name, as it would be in Korea.

from what i can see it looks like the current hard point is cycle life for the most mature seawater batteries... but it seems ot stack up similar to sodium ion batteries in size and density of power. so even if we ignore the carbon capture possibility and the desalination effects we still have a close to small scale production... knowing this takes some of the salt out if we send the effluent into desalination yes we can probably get a little cheaper desalination with RO systems. the one thing they are not covering here is the potential to take the brine after RO and processing for the other salts like lithium

You saying that the calcium and sodium salts cannot easily be removed is actually funny because you can split that water with ion membranes again and again. Each step isolated from the last, but each step is another flow battery.

Dang it. Now I want some poutine, too.

In the places where fresh water is most needed (hot, sunny, places), you could eschew the RO process entirely by using solar stills instead. You could use a Fresnel lens Solar Death Ray to heat up the water to evap temperature, and the vapor could travel through a pipe surrounded by the cold seawater to condense. Put the solar still into a greenhouse built to withstand extreme temperature, and the water will heat up naturally to close to evap temp.

One big problem with desalination plant is the brine they (can) put back out into the environment. This process captures sodium metal instead, which might be a viable feedstock for sodium batteries. Also, filtering out those heavier ions (Mn, Ca, etc.) might be doable with a different ceramic layer downstream; I think it just needs a different pore size.

Thanks for this, Matt. Very interesting. For those of us who live on our sailboats around the world (we call ourselves "cruisers") this system sounds like magic. We have to make our own electricity, & we usually have to make our own drinking water as well. We all have solar panels, fancy batteries (AGM, Gell, or LiFePO4), & most of us have small (but expensive & problematic) RO systems. And we're literally living on the ocean. So we certainly hope this technology matures quickly. Please keep us informed of developments & breakthroughs. We had no idea this was even coming.